Bernalillo, New Mexico

Bernalillo is one of the oldest continuously occupied European settlements in New Mexico. The name is said to go back to a string of haciendas along the Rio Grande. Diego de Vargas formally established the town in sixteen ninety-five, two years after the Spanish reconquest of New Mexico following the Pueblo Revolt.

For most of the colonial era Bernalillo was one of the more prosperous communities in the province, sitting on the Camino Real and drawing trade among the Pueblo peoples, Spanish settlers, and later Mexican ranchers. Today it is the seat of Sandoval County, a growing suburb north of Albuquerque, but its streets follow the same Rio Grande bottomland the first settlers chose more than three centuries ago.